Today I’ll continue our look at the violent side of tax resistance campaigns
by giving some examples of assaults and intimidation directed at collaborators
with the tax system:

In Paris during the French Revolution, legal proceedings against people
who destroyed the tax offices were abandoned when neither the officers in
charge of the investigation or the National Assembly itself had the
courage to stand up to popular indignation and threats.

Witnesses who were called to testify against the Fries Rebels “were
generally very reluctant to give information, being afraid the insurgents
would do them some injury.”

In the Whiskey Rebellion, “William Richmond, who had given information
against some of the rioters… had his barn burnt, with all the grain and
hay which it contained…”

During the Rebecca Riots, two or three hundred Rebeccaites met at an inn
in Pontyberem and, during the course of the meeting, forced the innkeeper
to swear not to admit the toll collector at the inn. In another example:
“the dead body of Thomas Thomas… was found in a river near Brechfa! This
man had been very much opposed to the Rebecca movement, and… had been to
Carmarthen to make a complaint to the authorities against some
Rebeccaites; on his return home that night he found his house,
etc., on fire.
Bearing this in mind, together with other circumstantial evidence, it is
plain that he had some bitter enemies in the neighbourhood, and it was
generally believed that he had been waylaid and murdered.” Thomas had on
another occasion testified against his servant and had him jailed, and
for this the Rebeccaites ransacked his house, destroying what they
could.

During the Tithe War in Ireland, resisters did what they could to prevent
people from cooperating with attempt to seize and auction off resisters’
goods:

[I]t almost invariably happened that either the assembled spectators
were afraid to bid, lest they should incur the vengeance of the
peasantry, or else they stammered out such a low offer, that, when
knocked down, the expenses of the sale would be found to exceed it. The
same observation applies to the crops. Not one man in a hundred had the
hardihood to declare himself the purchaser. Sometimes the parson,
disgusted at the backwardness of bidders, and trying to remove it, would
order the cattle twelve or twenty miles away in order to their being a
second time put up for auction. But the locomotive progress of the
beasts was always closely tracked, and means were taken to prevent
either driver or beast receiving shelter or sustenance throughout the
march.

One clergyman had to import some sixty workers to help him take his tithes
“in kind” from the farmers in his parish, “from distant counties, and at
high wages, who yet were incapable of obtaining more than a small portion
of tithes, being interrupted by a rabble — chiefly women — though men were
lurking in the background to support them.”

In colonial North Carolina during the Stamp Act agitation, “The stamp
masters were seized and forced to swear they would have nothing to do with
the stamps, and it being known when the vessel bringing the stamps would
come up to Wilmington, Colonels Ashe and Waddell, having called out the
militia from Brunswick and the adjoining counties to the number of some
700 men, seized the vessel and held her until her commander promised not
to permit the stamps to be taken from her.”

During the Reform Bill uprising in the
1830s, “Threats had been employed to
prevent auctioneers from selling distrained goods; and an auctioneer in
Bath had been obliged, in consequence of intimidation, to issue a
handbill, in which he gave public notice, that he would not receive for
sale any goods distrained for the non-payment of King’s Taxes.”

Irish Household Tax resisters recently mobbed Ireland’s Minister for
Public Expenditure and Reform, surrounding his car and chanting “fucking
scumbag” Another politician who witnessed the event said: “In my view,
there was an element of thuggery to it. Some of the protestors prevented
him from getting out of the car park.”

When Ondárroa tried to hire an outside debt collection company to go after
resisters; “Upon learning of the assignment of this work to the Bilbaoan
firm Gesmunpal, the nationalist left spread slogans via Internet in favor
of ‘civil disobedience,’ as well as calls and letters against the company.
Gesmunpal resigned.”

During the Annuity Tax resistance movement in Edinburgh, a newspaper was
sued for publicizing the names of the people who rented carts to the
government for hauling away distrained goods — the grounds of the suit
being that such publicity would be damaging to the business of the
carters.

The Poll Tax resistance movement in Thatcher’s Britain included attacks
and threats directed at collaborators with the tax, for example:

“Attacks and threats have been made against Bristol newsagents and shops
where people can pay the Poll Tax. Windows have been smashed and graffiti
daubed over businesses which have become agents for the Bristol-based
company ‘Penalty Points.’ The firm installs special tills with its
agents to collect the community charge on behalf of local authorities
for a fee. Mr. Ross Hendry, a spokesman for the company… said ‘because
of the attacks, one newsagent in Patchway has now declined taking an
agency after a brick was thrown through his window. He said another
newsagent in Bishoport Avenue, Hartclife had the words ‘Poll Tax scab’
and ‘you’re the first’ scrawled in white paint across his window. A
Circle K store in Cardiff where the revolutionary scheme was launched on
April 9th
with 48 agents, had its door locks jammed with superglue.”

some of the posters with threatening messages aimed at bailiffs and other poll tax collaborators

Intimidation of bailiffs (people authorized to seize and sell property
for tax arrears) was widespread: “Housing schemes and estates were
plastered with posters. One showing a vicious dog, read ‘Bailiffs? Make
my day!’ Another showing a picture of Malcolm X holding a machine gun
looking out from behind the curtains, read: ‘Bailiffs we’re ready.’ A
third showed a picture of a bailiff swinging in a noose. It read ‘Dead
bailiffs don’t knock on doors.’ In some areas bailiffs and registration
officers were photographed and their portraits were reproduced on
posters which read ‘wanted’ and listed their ‘crimes.’ These images were
extremely popular… People were used to seeing images of themselves in
the role of victim. Now wherever they looked there were images of their
adversaries in this role.”

“Wherever the council registration officers went they were harassed. In
Glasgow violent threats drove canvasser Robert Stevenson to quit his
job. He was physically threatened twice in four weeks and continually
harassed:

I’d just put the form through the door when this guy across in the
garden opposite started shouting. He was sitting in the garden with
about four others and they were all giving me dirty looks. He said
that if I came back to collect the form I would need a tank for
protection. I was in no doubt that they were serious. I didn’t finish
my last street. I just chucked it.

“…another canvasser… was ‘harassed by a gang.’ In this case, it was
reported that:

Four or five youths cornered him in a close in Gairbraid Avenue and
subjected him to abuse. A Strathclyde police spokesman revealed: “They
said it was a ‘No Poll Tax Area’ and told the worker to get out, which
he did.”

“Following these reports, the Poll Tax registration officer admitted
that ‘there had been at least four other incidents involving canvassers’
and… canvassers had been threatened (leaflets were grabbed from their
hands). Already over two members of his staff had resigned because of
fears about their personal safety.”

Mayors and municipal councils resigned en masse to
support the French wine-growers’ tax strike of
1907, and, according to one account, “there
have been threats to burn the property of those mayors failing to
resign.”

“Mr. Trueman, a Poll Tax snooper whose job was to call on people and
badger them into filling the registration forms, [was] unable to cope
with the abuse…

Mrs. Trueman found the corpse of her husband as she came back from
shopping. Fred Trueman, 52, an employee of Bristol City, had hanged
himself. “No-one can imagine what terrible pressure he had to work
under,” she claimed. “He was sworn at and threatened; he couldn’t
stand it any more.”

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